It's Going to be Giftmas Soon
by WhenTheSunFinallyCameUp
Summary: Christmas is coming soon for the Crystal Gems but Lapis is stuck and Peridot can't know what to do. Made this on a randomly generated prompt. Takes place after the events of my previous story For As Long As I Live but is not a sequel to it.
1. So What?

"It's going to be Giftmas soon, Lapis."

"So what?" Peridot and Lapis were looking out over the first snow. Lapis was holding her head up towards the snow touched fields. Unimpressed watching as white crystals grow closer to the ground.

"Giftmas, Lapis! Steven told me on Giftmas we will both be receiving presents based on our unique preferences. Mine will no doubt be the new limited run of Camp Pining Hearts."

Lapis rolled her eyes. "Well, that's cool and all, but I'm just not feeling up to it."

"Have you been ingesting the fungi in the back of the barn?"

"No."

"Then what **is** your issue?"

"I... don't know."

Silence settled. Not a satisfactory response, Peridot thought. "Would you allow me to run diagnostics on your gem?"

Lapis felt stuck in place watching the snow anyway, she sighed. "I won't stop you." Peridot leapt from the tailend of the car lodged into the barn and ran back inside the barn. She spied a glowing screen in the cloak of black, her computing machine. She wiggled her fingers, laughing and lifting the gem computer from the darkness up onto the back of the car that was the second story.

Peridot slammed the terminal on the couch's seat next to Lapis and began to type.

"Where'd you even get that thing?" Lapis glanced at the computer.

"Scavenged it from the kindergarten. Much stronger than human computation technology and has implements suited to a gem's needs."

Lapis blocked everything after kindergarten. "That place gives me the creeps." She went back to watching the snow.

"The kindergarten's great, it has tons of tucked away tech." A projection appeared in the air in front of the computer, a shade of green matching Peridot. She could manipulate it with her fingers. "Stay still." She brought the projection above the small of Lapis's back to the gem. Projected lines appeared and bent, its grid conformed to the dimensions of the gem. Peridot watched the terminal's screen throw lines, nodding along as if expecting all that she saw in the return until one line deviated, her face screwed up, and she began to type once more.

Lapis looked at Peridot lethargically. "What's the problem, doc?"

"This can't be right."

"Something wrong with your…?" Lapis didn't find the correct word and didn't feel like finding it.

"Nothing's wrong with my implements. It's just that… I see the issue, in this structure here." Peridot pointed at the terminal's screen and Lapis followed her finger. "This part of your gem is firing off when it doesn't need to be."

"Huh…." Lapis looked at the return which was completely incomprehensible to her eyes. Lapis shrugged and went back to lounging.

"What kind of response is that, clod?" Peridot jumped up on the couch, the terminal flopped over the side of the couch to the bed of the car. "Don't you care at all?"

A silence fell between the two.

"Can you please…" Lapis had done this before when she recovering from Jasper, letting her requests die off before it was finished and hoping that Peridot knew what she meant.

Peridot was on the brink of tears and she thought Lapis might be too. "Okay…" Peridot closed her eyes and breathed out all the anger she could. "I'll leave you alone." She slid off the couch, looking dejected.

She pointed at Lapis suddenly in tantrum. "This isn't over, clod!" She sprinted over the car's edge falling on her face, she scrambled to her feet and ran.

She ran until she couldn't breathe and she hit the ground with her knees. She could see her breath in the cold air. She glanced back at the barn panicking at the sight. She stood and ran the rest of the way to the warp pad with teary eyes.

Peridot was inconsolable in the Crystal Gem's bathtub, Steven didn't understand how they got there over the course of their conversation but they had. Amethyst was watching them from the doorway, tossing cheese curls into her mouth.

"I just don't know, Steven, she's been a 'sad sack' before, especially after Jasper, but this is different. The diagnostic gave me a reading I couldn't hope to fix."

Steven rubbed the back of his head. "I don't know much about about gem biology, Peridot."

She thought about a comparison. "The gems we have are comparable in human biology to… brains. They have reactions within them that make all that we are. Our feelings, memory storage, but also our forms unlike brains."

"So if there's an issue with her brain that keeps her sad, maybe it's like an issue just keeps giving her sadness."

"You're correct in a manner of speaking, She's stuck in this loop, but that doesn't answer the why. Why did this loop start? It might be the key to breaking it."

"Maybe we can go and ask her where she thinks this started?" He pointed his thumb back to the warp pad.

Peridot swallowed spit. "Uh, last time I talked to her…"

"It didn't end well?"

"I yelled." She squeaked out trying to be as small as possible.

"Oh, jeez…"

Steven and Peridot emerged from the bathroom doorway and heard giggling. The large pink maned girl from the party was furiously tickling Pearl on the crystal gem's only couch. Pearl cried. "St-stop, stop it!" She was laughing, not really fighting the fingers tickling her belly, slapping at the girl's forehead and hair. "Steven's here, stop it!" Pearl pushed her away, but was still drunk on the assault and smiling.

Steven was happy watching Pearl be happy. She had told Steven she hadn't been in a long time. She always acted like she had to keep things like that hid.

Sheena leaned off the couch and looked. "Sorry, Steven." She put on her most apologetic voice only placating Pearl and Pearl gave her another play slap on the forehead.

"No problem, gals. We're just breezing through."

Pearl fixed her shirt. "What was the issue, Steven?" Peridot had ran from the warp pad and into their bathroom earlier.

"It's ongoing, something to do with Lapis, she's sad again. I'll be back in a little bit, Pearl, keep a plate of ham for me if I'm back late." Pearl watched as Steven chased after Peridot.

"Is Lapis another gem?"

"Yes, Lapis Lazuli."

Amethyst leaned against the kitchen counter, eyeing the ham in the oven. The smell reached her nostrils from the doorway she had been watching the drama unfold from. "She's always sad I don't know how this time is any different."

"I think I should..." Pearl looked at the pad concerned. "See if I can help. I'll be right back, girls."

"You shouldn't leave your kid alone with the ham." She called after Pearl.

Amethyst yelled. "Shut up! I can control myself."

Sheena laughed, rolling over on the couch.

"You and her are like teenagers."


	2. I Promise

The snow had fallen and left a solid cold coating over the earth, gathered on the corn stalks. Accumulation on a green alien mask that had been left in the field between the rows of corn. Two emerged from behind a field, Peridot was exhausted again, Steven was catching his breath.

"Peridot, do we have to run?"

It didn't matter much they had already pretty much arrived at the barn, Peridot stared at the couch. Lapis was laying, burying her eyes into the cushions. "See." Peridot whispered and pointed.

"Don't despair."

"I'm not despairing, she is!" Lapis rolled over on the couch, and looked at the two arguing in the fields, then rolled back into a ball.

Steven chuckled. "I can see that."

"This is not a laughing matter." Peridot deflated from her vitriol and her face withered.

"Ok, ok." Steven put a hand on her shoulder. "We'll go talk to her, work this out."

They both ascended the ladder to the car. Peridot rushed first and then pulled Steven up as he approached the top. "Hey, let's take it slow."

Peridot quirked her brow but stopped, he was right, rushing and around screaming didn't work. All she did was make herself and Lapis feel awful.

They approached the couch, Peridot looking guilty, Steven looking concerned. "Lapis?"

Her greeting was half eaten by the couch's old cushions. "Hey, Steven."

Steven took a seat on the arm of the couch and spoke gently. "I heard you've been feeling down, Lapis?"

"Yeah."

"Would you like to talk about that with us?"

"What is there to say, I feel awful." Lapis unraveled out of the ball and laid on her back, staring straight up into the grey sky.

"Well, me and Peridot are wondering why you might be feeling this way."

"She should know better. She did the dia-whatevers, right?"

Peridot racked her brain. "They didn't tell us anything we didn't know: You're sad." Peridot bordered on anger, but she bit her lip. "Do you perhaps have any other reasons you might be sad? Any at all that might be eluding you."

"It's like somebody took me, scooped me and threw me outside, and I could just float up into the sky and never return."

Peridot gulped.

"I have felt like this before but it was for reasons I could point to in hindsight, ya know? Now it's like I'm bleeding but I can't even find a stab wound." She pressed her teary eyes into her forearm.

"I'm so sorry, Lapis, but what was happening when you first started to feel like this?"

"I was walking through the fields, the first real cold this Winter. It just hit me, but it wasn't bad then."

"It just got worse?" Pearl stepped out of the barn and onto the deck.

"Pearl?" Steven perked up, but Pearl's attention was on Lapis.

"Yeah. Now, it's like I'm not even here, I'm not even alive."

"Peridot, Lapis did you ever hear the story of Blue Sapphire while you were on homeworld?"

Peridot raised her hand eagerly, Pearl looked at her. "Wasn't she a scout for the diamonds? She was shattered by spies thousands of years ago."

"Well, yes and no..., Yellow Diamond's pearl told me the story personally before me and Pink arrived on earth. Blue Sapphire was just below the diamonds in authority. A scout for kindergartens, for five thousand years a beloved confidant of the diamonds, a strong willed gem. One day her and her legion stole themselves away to Sapphire's own planet without a word of notice to the empire. It took no time and rumors circulated till the diamonds announced that Blue had retreated to her world as a 'tactical decision', that she was fearing an attack by a possible threat.

"Whispers began again, word was she was distressed in her domain. Then the Diamonds had to admit something that was not quite the truth again, she was in 'hysterics' and that they trusted her to sort it out herself. She was in these 'hysterics' for decades. They had gone to her side a few times but nothing they could say made her better so eventually they left her to herself.

"After nearly a century of being without Sapphire, a final rumor circulated. That Blue Sapphire was shattered. A shock ran through the empire. Whispers of why began once more, but the diamonds did not correct them, well at least not for a while. They were making no public appearances but the Pearl saw it all. The grief that went through Yellow and Blue. Sapphire had shattered herself while locked away. Her own pearl found her in pieces."

Steven was tearing up. "That's awful."

"The Diamonds never tried to understand their loved ones or their subjects." She saw the war in her eye, she saw Pink Diamond 'shattering'.

Lapis was laying down, using her forearm to shield from the world. "What does this have to do with me?"

Pearl was sitting cross legged on the cabin floor and looking at Lapis. "This sort of sadness, melancholia. It may be what you have."

"What can we do? I know the Diamonds have advanced gem medicine but I don't know its applications. Perhaps we can talk to Yellow D-"

Pearl placed a hand on her shoulder. "Peridot."

"I am just running through the possibilities. There must be some solution."

"I've felt this pain before and I think there's no… easy way out."

"Cool, I'm incurably sad?"

"No." Pearl thought about her words. "It's just hard to say when you'll be fine again."

"I don't want to be like this..."

Peridot looked at Pearl working it through it in her head. Then she stared out over the fields as snow slowly fell, the power in Peridot's arms had gone, and she wasn't typing. Lapis was lying, dying on the couch in pain. And there was nothing Peridot could do. Nothing in the universe to do.

"You'll have to stay by her side."

Peridot felt like crying but saluted. "I promise."

"There are things the Diamonds were never willing to do. Not even for those that they loved."

"Crystal Gems stick together."

Peridot wiped something out of her eye and smiled. "Th-thank you, Steven, Pearl."

"How about we all go get dinner at the temple."

Lapis rolled over, speaking mechanically. "We don't eat food."

"It's tradition. We'll also be decorating the tree, and that's fun."

When the sun dipped below the sea they had Lapis put the star on the tree. It made her smile but she retreated to where she'd been sitting all night while the happy people had fun. Beside a cold window at the house, staring at the snow falling, piling up higher and higher. It was dark and cold but the porch light made the snow look pure white, yet there were deeper darks outside the light. Something felt wrong. Her face quirked. Something brushed her. Peridot put her hand on Lapis's arm and looked at her. She had a hopeful smile for Lapis.

Lapis tried to give the gesture back to the little green gem but she still felt the darkness, it was waiting and Peridot stayed by her side hoping that one day it'd go away.


End file.
